After the week of teaching Scotland, I had a nice weekend spending more time with my co-teachers at CELA touring the area. The ladies at CELA love spending time with me and Cana, so we spent the weekend visiting Chiayi and Tainan with them.
On Saturday, we went hiking with Callie and her two kids Meredith and Jeremiah. Meredith attends the camp and loves attention while Jeremiah is too old for the camp and likes to discuss different subjects from school to the best superhero.
We went hiking near Chiayi park, which is about twenty minutes from school. We did a shorter hike, but the humidity made it feel quite substantial. The scenery was gorgeous: banana trees, the view of the city (not too hazy), the variety of flowers...I could go on. It was nice to spend time with Callie outside of work and enjoy the afternoon with her kids.
Later that afternoon I went with some of the missionaries and friends from church to see Harry Potter at the Chiayi theater. It was nice to spend more time with both the teachers as well as the Taiwanese Christians.
Sunday morning we left early to tour Tainan with Callie and her two kids Jeremiah and Meredith along with Christy, a friend from church. Tainan is about an hour from Chiayi on the East China Sea. We first went to the Tainan Salt Festival close to the beach. Tainan is famous for its sea salt, so we were able to see the yearly festival as well as climb a hill of salt.
We then went to the city to see a treehouse built amongst the trees that grew over a Japanese official building from the early 20th century. It was quite a unique place considering the history and present use of the area. The trees were massive, they were there before the Japanese, but the trees overtook the building after they were abandoned.
As we came back from the treehouse, we stumbled across a huge temple preparing for the upcoming Ghost Month, which begins in mid August and ends in September. There were crowds of people buying and burning ghost money, which they believe will be sent to the world of the dead to their family members. The smell of both the ghost money and incense sticks was quite overwhelming, with the humidity and heat it made it quite difficult to see or breathe. There were also a lot of stands selling food and other amulets.
We then went to the beach to put our feet in the East China Sea and watch the sun prepare to set. It was so beautiful to see the distant rocks in the sea and to play with Jeremiah and Meredith. We built a doomed sandcastle, which is a sandcastle built too close to the waves, but the challenge is to see how long it will survive. We built two defensive walls, but in the end we had to leave. It was nice to spend more time with Callie's family and with Christy, with all the hustle and bustle of the week, it was refreshing to slow down and enjoy time with them.
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